The Dark Rose

By darkmagickwillow

Copyright © May 2003

Chapter 19 (Secrets)

The faint light of dawn streaming through the blinds gradually brought Tara to wakefulness. As she slowly emerged from slumber, she was surprised to find herself holding Willow tightly in her arms. Opening her eyes, she looked down to see Willow's head resting on her shoulder, her long, fiery hair tousled with sleep, and one arm flung possessively across Tara's stomach.

Willow looked small and fragile as she slept. Tara ran one of her hands down Willow's pale shoulder, tracing the faint lines of scars there. Willow had been through so much. As she took one of Willow's small hands in her own, she realized with surprise that all the scrapes and cuts of last night were gone. How had that happened? She didn't know of any healing magicks that effective and Willow hadn't been in any shape to cast last night in any case.

Tara had insisted on walking Willow home last night and was unsure if Willow would have made it even with her help if the mansion hadn't been so close to the graveyard. She had helped Willow get ready for bed and tucked her in. As she had stood beside the bed, trying to figure out what to do with herself, Willow had simply asked "Aren't you going to join me?" The decision had made itself without any need for thought on her part.

She'd felt a little shy about undressing in front of Willow so she'd borrowed a nightshirt and changed in the bathroom. Willow had been almost asleep, exhausted from her exertions of the night, when she returned. Willow had smiled sleepily at her and moved close as Tara got into the bed. Tara had enclosed Willow in her arms, and then they had kissed goodnight. She didn't remember anything after that. It had been a long, tiring night for both of them.

Gently stroking Willow's hand with her thumb as she held it, she smiled to herself as she thought about how appropriate the Gothic mansion had seemed for the Willow she'd first met. The exterior was beautiful yet gloomy. Most of the rooms she'd seen last night were hauntingly empty, though others were piled so full of books that she almost couldn't walk through them. She'd quickly come to the conclusion that Willow wasn't the best of housekeepers even before she saw the piles of assorted clothes on the bedroom floor.

It was almost like there were two Willows. There was the powerful witch, confident and almost invulnerable, afraid of nothing. Was it dark magicks buried deeply in Willow's flesh that had healed her injuries overnight? Tara knew a little about permanent spells. They always had a price, often in blood. Something about the inner darkness she'd seen in Willow's aura made her think that her speculations might be right. She shifted uneasily in the bed.

Then there was the young girl she held in her arms, so vulnerable to her slightest word. In many ways, Willow was her age and not just physically. All those years alone had built in her a terrible strength and determination, but it had been at the expense of a normal life and family. She had seen the depths of that loss when Willow, awkward and uncertain, had met Dawn yesterday. Something as simple as a hug from a friend had been alien and difficult for her at first, yet Tara had seen the wonderful mingling of happiness and sadness in Willow's eyes as she accepted the embrace from Dawn like a priceless gift.

The two Willows weren't completely separate though. They were connected by their love of her.

She shook her head softly as she reached down to tenderly caress Willow's velvet soft cheek. Willow murmured in her sleep and snuggled closer, sighing contentedly.

Her angel asleep.

Watching her sleep, Tara felt a tremendous surge of love for the small redhead. She placed her hand protectively over Willow's heart. The feel of Willow's heart beating against her hand reminded her that no matter what she'd seen of the future, Willow was right here beside her, alive and well, in the present. That was what was important.

The events of last night had tempered her understanding of her visions of the future. She now knew that what she'd seen wasn't everything that was to come or even everything that was important. They would face challenges and experience joys that she hadn't foreseen.

Tara also realized that she had imposed her own meanings and interpretations on the events that she had seen. She had seen Willow in danger of death, but that didn't necessarily mean that she would be killed by that spell. They had faced death and worse last night and come through that desperate encounter intact.

She had love and hope. What more could she ask for? She smiled at Willow, feeling warm and drowsy. Watching the slow rise and fall of Willow's chest as she breathed, Tara drifted back to sleep.

Hours later, Willow awoke with the bright light of noon filtering through the blinds. She felt warm and protected as she drowsily opened her eyes and found herself securely enclosed in Tara's embrace. She looked into the pure serenity of Tara's sleeping face and reached up to brush an errant strand of gold away from her cheek. Tara's blonde hair was mussed from sleeping on it, but it didn't matter. She was the most beautiful thing Willow had ever seen.

She gently ran her fingers through Tara's silken hair as she thought. How did she deserve to be with someone like Tara? She'd come so close to breaking her promise last night. If Tara hadn't been there, she certainly would have. In some ways it might have been better if she had as she would have been able to destroy the Master without any chance of his escape.

But she knew that each step into the darkness took her further away from Tara and her newly rediscovered family. A tenuous family, to be sure, but hers nonetheless. It had felt so good when Dawn had called her family. She had been alone too long. Tara was her always and everything, but there was room in her heart for the rest of her family too.

She hugged Tara tightly to her chest and smiled when she didn't wince at the contact. The fight last night had left her with a few broken ribs, but her magical protections had healed them overnight. Her protections were dark magicks, but ones she had established long ago. She wondered if their presence would bother Tara even though she'd cast those spells long before she'd made her promise about using dark magic.

Then she smiled as she remembered how Tara had blushed while helping her undress last night. Though Willow sometimes felt impatient, wanting them to be closer now, Tara was so cute in these tentative, early steps in building their relationship anew.

She gazed again at the calm beauty of Tara's sleeping face, tracing a track on the supple softness of her cheek with one finger. Her throat choked with emotion as she tried to accept that at last Tara was real here beside her, beautiful and vulnerable. She didn't have to maintain the hard, narrow focus of her quest any longer. Yet if Tara had been hit by that blast of emerald fire last night, the consequences wouldn't have been a few broken ribs.

Every day she spent with Tara she felt her sense of invulnerability ebbing away. As she let her heart open to Tara, she exposed herself to all the hurts of the world which she had been safe from for so long. It was a fearful price to pay, but as she looked into Tara's face she knew that it was worth it.

She couldn't lose Tara again. Not for anything.

Willow wouldn't let Tara face the Master again. When the time came and they knew what they were facing, Willow would go alone to destroy him. Tara's light wasn't meant for the kind of darkness such a conflict would require. Willow knew that she couldn't defeat the Master while keeping her promise to Tara. It would be better if Tara wasn't present to see that. She would make one last journey into the darkness alone to keep them both safe.

Willow pushed her dark thoughts away as she moved her hand down so she could rub the softness of Tara's warm belly under her shirt. She smiled as she felt the sleeping blonde move into her touch. She watched Tara's face in anticipation, waiting for the cerulean eyes to open and fill with delight as they looked at her.

She wanted to see herself in Tara's eyes. She much preferred the person Tara saw with her eyes to the one she saw in the mirror. In those eyes, she was altogether beautiful and wonderful.

When those eyes opened, her whole world would change. Gone would be the world of shadows lurking in a deeper darkness that she had struggled through with obdurate tenacity for so long. It would be replaced by a world full of colors and feeling. Tara's eyes gave her world meaning.

Willow smiled as she saw the first slight fluttering of Tara's eyelids. As Tara's blue eyes slowly opened, her lips quirked into a crooked smile as she saw Willow. Her eyes regarded Willow with a fuzzy happiness that gradually metamorphosed into the full splendour of delight. Tara softly murmured, "Good morning."

As Tara's eyes opened and looked at her, Willow's heart filled with so much love that she couldn't find a way to express it all. It was beyond words. She tenderly placed her lips against the soft pliancy of Tara's cheek and kissed her there before returning her "Good morning."

Tara stretched, arching her body sensually against Willow's, as the fire of Willow's kiss pulled her fully into wakefulness. Then she wrapped Willow tightly in her arms, pulling her close with all her strength as if trying to make them one flesh. She smiled down at Willow. "Can we always wake up this way?" she asked.

"Oh yes," Willow breathed as she brought her lips to Tara's.

As Tara entered the school library with Willow, she reflected on how different it seemed this afternoon. The sun was up, the power was on, and better yet there wasn't an army of zombies outside trying to kill them. Still, all wasn't well with the world. Although Giles and Dawn were reading at their usual table, Giles from a book and Dawn from a computer terminal, Spirit was curled up under a blanket in the comfy chair with a heavy tome on her lap. She looked unnaturally pale and shivered as Tara watched.

"Tara," Spirit said as she spotted her. "You're late!" she accused with a smile on her face. "If I can't get out of research like this, then you certainly shouldn't."

"Willow and I spent all morning-" Tara began.

Spirit raised her eyebrows and interrupted her before she could finish. "I'm sure we don't need to know about that," she teased.

Tara let her hair fall forward to hide her face as she blushed. "We were researching," she protested.

Dawn watched the exchange with a smile on her face. "I remember the kind of research you two used to do," she said, compounding Tara's embarrassment. It was good to let some of their tension out this way after what had happened last night. She'd watched over Spirit carefully today as she was worried about the young woman even though she'd just met her last night. Spirit's courage reminded her so much of Buffy, but she seemed so young to be facing that every night.

Giles was relieved that Spirit felt well enough to tease too even though he was unsure about whether Willow and Tara's relationship was a good thing. He interrupted the teasing, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible as he didn't wish to antagonize Willow. "Did you find anything?"

"We did," Willow answered as she put down the stack of books she was carrying beside Giles. She helped Tara unload her backpack, which was full of more reference tomes. She carefully removed the last item, bundled in layers of cloth, from the backpack and unwrapped the ancient book from its protective covering before handing it directly to Giles.

Giles looked at the book closely before opening it. Turning the pages with reverence he examined the tome closely. "It's the earliest Tacitus I've heard of," he said.

"It's also complete," Willow said with a slightly smug smile.

"But the complete histories have been lost for centuries," Giles protested, as he looked down at the book in wonder.

"Now it's found," Willow said lightly. "It's a gift for you. I know that things between us can't be made suddenly right with a single gesture, but I wanted you to know that I want them to be right." She looked into his eyes, her face open and accepting, willing him to understand what she felt for him, for Dawn, and for all her family.

Giles looked up at Willow, searching for sincerity in her dark eyes. When he finally nodded, accepting the gift with a "Thank you," the tense, worried line on his brow relaxed for the first time since Willow had seen him again in Sunnydale.

Tara saw that there were still reservations in Giles's eyes, but she was happy that things were less tense between the two than last night. She reached over and picked up the most promising of the references they had found, a thin, tattered book. "This one is a journal of someone who found the emerald we saw last night. It's been translated more than once and we're not sure of the exact dates," she said. "I'll read the most interesting entry. It's also the final one." The group at the table gathered around her as she read from the book, while Spirit listened from her chair.

"The experiment was a success beyond our worst nightmares. The Heart's power of resurrection is limitless, but it cannot be harnessed for anyone's benefit. I don't know if the Heart is broken or whether it was simply evil from the beginning, but it will surely destroy any who uses it as it has condemned us to the terrible fate we now face.

After the grotesque failures of our early experiments, we were foolish to try something more ambitious. But the Doctor insisted that it would work, that the problem was the young age of what we were trying to bring back, that it would be easier to resurrect the distant past. Did he truly believe this? I guess it doesn't matter now. I saw the Old Ones take him.

Yes, we succeeded in bringing back the Old Ones. They're hunting me as I write this journal. We didn't know that they would be so terrible. Perhaps they weren't when they were alive, but the Heart warps everything it brings back. Yet, the Old Ones aren't the worst of what we brought back.

The Heart brought back everything. Everything. The land outside the building in which I hide is the bare and rocky landscape of eons ago before life emerged from the sea. Who knows what lurks in the sea off the shores of the island now? Erupting volcanos fill the air with ash, while earthquakes constantly rock the island. That's our only hope ... that the island will destroy itself before the Old Ones can leave. I hear them coming now."

"The fragment ends there," Tara said. They looked at each other soberly as she finished. The library felt darker than it had been when she began reading the journal.

"That confirms what we've seen the Master do," Giles said. He took off his glasses to polish them. "But is there anything about how to destroy it?"

"There was one other important piece of information I gleaned from the journal," Willow said, walking back and forth as she addressed the group. "It's that the greater the stature of the wielder, the more power he can draw from the Heart. It amplifies your innate powers. Since vampires can't generally cast spells, we've seen only a ghost of what the Heart could do in the hands of someone with real power."

"So he could bring back what exactly?" Spirit asked, not sounding overly worried.

"All sorts of things," Giles began. "Perhaps all the demons that lived here before the Hellmouth was close, or-"

"Oh my God," Willow said slowly, a terrible realization dawning in her eyes. "Buffy!"

"What?" Tara asked, puzzled at first by Willow's exclamation. Then as she realized what Willow was talking about, she softly said, "Oh."

"Last night, she was-" Willow began.

"No," Dawn said firmly, placing a gentle hand on Willow's arm. "It's okay. We cremated her body. There was nothing left to raise left night."

"But what about..." Giles began, then trailed off embarrassedly, realizing that it probably wasn't the best topic to bring up when the person he was about to ask about was sitting across the table from him.

"What about what?" Spirit asked in a slightly annoyed voice as the other three exchanged looks with Giles that indicated that they knew what he was about to say. "Or should I say who?"

"Me," Tara said, looking down at her hands spread on the table. She shuddered as Giles's words conjured an image in her mind of herself as one of the walking dead last night. "He's talking about me." Willow put a comforting hand on Tara's shoulder.

"What?" Spirit exclaimed, more confused than ever.

"Not really you," Dawn said from where she was standing beside Willow. "Your past self."

"Okay," Spirit said as she pushed back her chair and stood up. "Somebody needs to start explaining this now." She looked down at Dawn. "First, who are you and why are you here? I know it's more than you being Buffy's sister."

Tara looked up at Willow, wordlessly asking for her help. "Tara's body is protected by magic," Willow explained, causing Spirit's puzzled annoyance to focus on her instead of Dawn. "The spell wouldn't have been able to affect it either."

Tara let out the breath she hadn't realized that she had been holding in a long sigh. Before she could really feel her relief at the thought that there hadn't been a zombie who looked like her last night, another thought nagged at her mind. What kind of attachment to the past did those spells represent for Willow? Were they still there just to prevent something like last night from happening or were they indicative of deeper feelings?

Giles interrupted before Spirit could say anything. "Tara is the reincarnation of Tara Maclay who was a friend of Dawn and Willow," he said. "We just learned about this recently. I called Dawn to help Tara deal with the news."

"That's why I'm here," Dawn said, looking compassionately at the confused slayer.

"And you believe this?" Spirit asked, turning to face Tara.

"It's true," Tara nodded. She looked anxiously at Spirit, unsure of how her friend would react. Today was the first time she had talked with someone about this who hadn't known her in the past.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded of Tara, but the hurt feelings so evident in her eyes belied the anger of her voice.

"I ... I didn't know what to say," Tara said hesitantly as she met Spirit's brown eyes. "I couldn't quite accept it myself at first. I didn't want you thinking that I was suddenly someone you didn't know ... because I'm not." With a diffident glance at Willow she added, "I'm still me."

"I see," Spirit said, getting up. "You're still my 'friend' who doesn't tell me anything." She walked towards the doors out of the library.

"Wait," Tara pleaded, getting up to follow her. Willow watched uncertainly, not sure whether she should follow along with Tara.

"Don't," Dawn said, gently grabbing Tara's shoulder. "She needs some time."

"Spirit," Giles called out.

"Fill me in when I get back," Spirit said as she went through the doors without a backwards glance.

"Well," Giles sighed. "That could have gone better. I meant to ask you to tell her, Tara, but with everything that happened yesterday..."

"It's okay, Giles," Dawn said. "We understand."

"It's my fault," Willow said, garnering a startled look from Giles. "I shouldn't have brought up that subject."

"No," Tara said, taking Willow's hand. "It's mine. I should have told her. She's my friend."

"It'll be okay," Dawn said, feeling that she'd been saying that a lot lately. "She needs some time to think it over, then she'll be back like she said."

"I hope so," Tara said.

"Trust me," Dawn said, then took off her reading glasses and sat back down in her chair. "Now why is it called the Heart?"

"The full name is the Heart of Corruption," Tara answered, letting Dawn coax her back into research mode as she sat down beside Dawn. She stuck her tongue out. "See, I was doing research."

Giles cleared his throat. "Returning to Willow's statement about it being an amplifier," he said. "If it depends on innate power, why is each spell that he casts more powerful than the last?"

"It takes knowledge to fully utilize any magical artifact," Willow said. "Someone must be teaching him." Her eyes darkened with that thought. She knew too many people who could possess such knowledge, many of whom would be happy to use it to hurt her. She had tried to not leave such loose ends behind her, but over the years they had accumulated. She had paid them little attention, confident that she would be a match for any of them, but now her life was complicated. Wonderfully so, but still complicated.

"Then we have to find out who this teacher is," Giles said firmly. "Unfortunately in Sunnydale there are many candidates."

"True," Willow said with a frown. "What did the three of you find?"

"Dawn found something on the net that may indicate where the heart was found in recent times," Giles said. He gestured in Dawn's direction. "Why don't you read it, Dawn?"

"Okay," Dawn said, looking at the computer terminal in front of her. "It's a lab book entry from a UC Sunnydale professor who was studying the Tunguska site in Siberia."

"It was responsible for the 1908 Tunguska blast?" Tara asked incredulously.

"I don't know," Dawn said. "It may have only been uncovered by the blast. Let me read the entry and you'll see." She hit a few keys and started reading from the screen in front of her.

"I found a most unusual stone in a rocky matrix today near the center of the site. Superficially it looks like an uncut emerald, but is the size of a fist, much larger than any known emerald, and gives off a faint green luminescence. The stone is also intensely cold like nothing else that I've ever found. It is also harder than diamond. We can not chip or cut it with anything we have to take a sample for analysis. We'll have to store it until we get back to the Sunnydale."

Dawn turned the monitor around so that everyone could see the picture of the emerald he was talking about. Clearly it was the same huge emerald-like stone that the Master had held last night.

"Let me guess," Willow said sourly. "He's dead now."

Giles nodded. "He made it back to Sunnydale, but died several days later from 'neck trauma'," he said. "However, there was one more lab entry after he returned. It stated that radioisotope dating indicated that the strata it was found in was Precambrian, but that the object was older than the Earth. They thought something must be wrong with their measurement, but there is another explanation."

"The Old Ones brought it with them when they first came here," Willow said grimly.

"What does that mean?" Dawn asked, wrinkling her brow in puzzlement.

"Before life arose on the earth," Giles lectured. "The Old Ones came down from the stars to live here. The demons and creatures that you fight are their distant descendants. No one really knows much about them except that they were extraordinarily proficient with magic."

"Okay," Dawn said. "But what does that mean about the Heart?"

"It's indestructible," Willow said flatly.

They looked at each other uneasily as Willow's words echoed through the quiet library. How could they defeat something that had survived through all the ages of the world?

Deep underground, Amy stood in front of the Master's throne, looking up at the now hideous form of the Master. He clung to a semblance of life with terrible tenacity. The skin of his face and neck had melted and flowed like molten wax. One eye, full of emerald fire, peered balefully out of the wreckage of his features. He cradled the Heart in his hands like a beloved child.

"How do you explain your failure?" he demanded, glaring at her with his single eye full of hate. The Heart flared brightly with his anger.

"The Slayer by herself would have fallen, but she had powerful allies we didn't know about," Amy explained in a calm, reasonable tone. "I can show you how to deal with them though" she assured him.

Green fire spilled out of the Heart as he shot up from his throne to shout down at her. "I don't care!" he shouted. "You failed me!" He raised the Heart high to kill her, haloing himself with magical fire.

"The dark witch is coming for you now," Amy warned him without backing down. "Without my help you'll surely die."

The Master glared at Amy, baring his fangs in a terrible grimace, but sank back down into his throne. "What do you suggest?" he asked petulantly.

"I knew this witch in the past," Amy said. "I know the one spectre that can destroy her." She would give the Master what he would think was the key to defeating Willow, but she would keep the real key for herself. And when she used her key, Willow would hand the Heart over to her without a fight.

"We tried that," the Master said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Ah," Amy said. "But the Master had been defeated in battle. This time we'll bring back someone who never experienced defeat at the hands of any opponent." She smiled promisingly at the Master as she began to explain the details of her plan.

For Dawn, it felt like old times as she walked beside Willow through the graveyard. Tara was ahead of them, leading the patrol. Spirit had still been too ill from her encounter with the Heart to go out tonight so they were filling in for her. Dawn was surprised that Willow was so calm about Tara patrolling, especially as point woman, after how she had reacted last night. Thinking about last night brought up a question she'd been waiting to ask Willow.

"Last night," she started. "Tara told you to remember your promise. What did she mean?"

Willow looked over at Dawn for a minute, considering how to answer her question. "I promised to give up dark magic," she said.

"That's great!" Dawn said enthusiastically. Noting the lack of a positive response from Willow, she asked. "It is great, isn't it?"

"I hate that the dark magic takes me away from Tara," Willow admitted. "But sometimes it also offers the best chance to protect her."

"Why?" Dawn asked curiously. "Is dark magic more powerful than light magic?"

"No," Willow said. "But it's easier to gain access to dark magic. With light magic, the price is up front and to draw great power from light sources you have to be doing something that the light powers approve of. Anyone can draw power from dark sources, but the price comes afterwards. It's more dangerous to use, but you have more freedom." Willow didn't mention to Dawn how much easier it had been to use dark magic after she'd pulled Tara's essence from Glory.

"It still sounds like light magic is better," Dawn said cautiously, not wanting to push Willow.

"It usually is," Willow agreed. "But there are some things you can't do with it. Resurrection being one of them." She looked at Dawn with heartfelt regret in her eyes. "Tell me. Could I have saved her if I'd been here?"

"Buffy?" Dawn asked. "You can't blame yourself, Willow. She died of leukemia." Dawn looked sad but proud as she talked about her sister. She had been able to accept her sister's death in a way that Giles hadn't yet and she was proud that no vampire or demon had been able to defeat Buffy.

"I wish I'd been there for her," Willow said with a regretful sigh. She wished she could have seen Buffy one last time.

Dawn reached out to squeeze Willow's hand. "You can't change the past, Willow," she said. It was a platitude, but one that Dawn knew Willow needed to accept in her heart after spending most of her life trying to do just that. "But you can be there for your family in the future. Don't leave us again," she pleaded softly. "I missed you and Tara so much."

"I won't," Willow promised with soft eyes.

"When the Sun's up one day, we could go visit her grave if you want," Dawn offered.

"I'd like that," Willow said with a faint smile. They walked together in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching Tara ahead of them for any warnings of vampiric activity. They actually hadn't seen any vampires tonight. The Master was apparently regrouping after his defeat of the previous night, but it was better to be safe and finish the patrol.

"There was another reason I asked you to come patrol tonight," Willow said to Dawn.

"It wasn't just for the pleasure of my company?" Dawn asked in a mock hurt tone of voice.

"No," Willow smiled. "Though I would've been more than happy to have you for that alone." Her demeanor became very serious as she looked at Dawn. "We can't destroy the Heart, but there's another way to get rid of it."

"Why didn't you mention it at the meeting?" Dawn asked with a puzzled expression on her face. "Does it involve dark magic?"

"Because I need your help," Willow said. "I didn't know how Giles would react to my request."

"My help?" Dawn asked. "What can I do? I'm not a Slayer or a witch."

Willow gave Dawn an unfathomable look.

"You're the Key, Dawn."

Continued...